about cottonwood trees

I'd say about 15-20% of my 5 acres are cottonwoods. I was thinking about cutting them all down and filling the void with good edible and useful trees and shrubs. Anybody want to talk me out of it? What is a good use for the wood once I cut them down, or should I just leave the trees where they fall in order to rot naturally and contribute to the forest?

PermForLife wrote:
I'd say about 15-20% of my 5 acres are cottonwoods. I was thinking about cutting them all down and filling the void with good edible and useful trees and shrubs. Anybody want to talk me out of it? What is a good use for the wood once I cut them down, or should I just leave the trees where they fall in order to rot naturally and contribute to the forest?

they're champion suckerers (let's get that word in the Webster's, asap). cut down cottonwoods and you'll end up with a bunch more cottonwoods unless you're very fastidious about removing those suckers. my advice is to use that trait to your advantage.

cottonwood is useful stuff. hugelkultur has recently been gaining popularity, especially among this crowd, and cottonwood works well in that application. might have to let it rot for a year before you bury it, though, or it'll just sprout more cottonwood.

because of the suckering, it'll make an awful lot of biomass continually, without much additional effort. managing your cottonwoods as coppice seems like a good idea. maybe you'll decide to remove some or most of them permanently, but don't get rid of them all.

Thanks for your reply. Maybe I should cut some of them to let them age, and then use those for hugelkulture. I plan to get rid of the stumps on at least some of them.

A note on stumps. If the plan includes getting rid of stumps, IF the proper heavy equipment is available, it is easier to push the tree over than to cut it down and then try to remove the stump. But you do need something like a big skid steer or bulldozer.

my family in Michigan prefers the cottonwood for spring and fall firewood saving the denser stuff for colder weather, we found that if you take a hatchet out in springtime ad girdle a tree about 2" deep all theway around the trunk then by time the first snow lets us use the wood sled its dry enough to use as firewood and its a lot easier to pull that sled than it is when you stack it full of green poplar

just came across the idea of using bark for shingles. not a new idea, just new to me. American chestnut (Castanea dentata) was the bark of choice before the blight, but tulip poplar (Liriodendron tulipifera) has recently been gaining popularity for this purpose. I imagine that cottonwood (Populus trichocarpa) would work as well or better.

in my experience it is better to NOT cut them if they are green and growing, if you are attempting to clear the land..cause the following spring you will have about a thousand baby trees clogging your woods.

the BEST way to remove any members of the aspen family is to allow them to die naturally and then take them down, then they are large enough for firewood, and the roots and stumps are not as likely to send up suckers..

they make fantastic nurse woods for starting a hardwood forest..and if you have a stand of the aspen family, you can throw in nuts, and seeds, or put in seedlings, of your hardwood or evergreens that you prefer in your forest, and as the hardwoods and evergreens begin to grow the aspen trees will die off..leaving the lovely forest duff behind for your new hardwood forest..

as they rot very quickly on top of the ground when they die, you can nearly plant right in them ..and they fall easily , sometimes jacknifiing with the tops coming down leaving the trunks standing..sometimes you can leave those trunks for critters for a good long while..or overplant them with vines..but eventually they will fall down

PermForLife wrote:
I'd say about 15-20% of my 5 acres are cottonwoods. I was thinking about cutting them all down and filling the void with good edible and useful trees and shrubs. Anybody want to talk me out of it? What is a good use for the wood once I cut them down, or should I just leave the trees where they fall in order to rot naturally and contribute to the forest?

If they are big, I would just girdle them and leave standing snags. They make fantastic habitat for cavity-nesting birds and other creatures. You can plant underneath at the same time you girdle them. At the wildlife refuge where I volunteer, a bunch of the cottonwoods were girdled by beavers and there is a big flock of purple martins nesting in them now (in cavities).

Cotton wood is no good for building because it has a tendency to absorb and aspirate water, which makes it warp and twist. It is surprisingly strong for its weight however, which makes it ideal for scaffolding planks and walking sticks. It also has a tendency to pulp rather than splinter, which makes it an ideal surface for wood working and shop benches. Saplings and branches are really flexible, great for bending frames for sweat lodges or similar structures. The cotton fluff makes good stuffing or insulation, the easiest way to harvest it is to wait for a breezy day in early summer when the air is full of it, it falls to the ground and rolls itself up into drifts about 6 inches high, look for it against fallen logs, creek banks and street curbs. In a blizzard, you can feed the inner bark to horses, the outer bark is popular amongst wood carvers. I like to use rotten cotton wood to smoke salmon with, if I can't find Alder. The leaves make a good garden bed topping in the fall: after they get wet and slimy you can lay them over the dirt kind of like paper mache. The red sap is really sticky, I wonder if you could wild-craft glue out of it? What else can I say, Cottonwood is awesome!

Cottonwood is the preferred wood for firing micaceous pottery in northern New Mexico, USA, because it burns quickly. Cottonwood roots are used for doll making. It is easy to carve.

How do you sex cottonwood cuttings? I understand males do not produce "cotton". Is "cotton " the bloom? I want to make sure I get blooms.

I make my bowdrill sets from cottonwood,and the innerbark of the cottonwood makes good tinder bundles

Because the wood pulps instead of splinters, it is great for trailer decking and inside livestock barns/pens. It is usually milled wet and fastened down right away before it starts to dry , shrink , and move around.

Our land is almost completely dense forest with mixed hardwoods as well as hemlock and white pine. We have a number of massive eastern cottonwoods that are nearing the end of their time amongst the living. Our land is wet so it is common for them to fall over in a strong storm. When this happens, I mill the trunks with my Alaskan chainsaw mill and use the boards for building projects. I use the the wood green and have had no major problems with this. The wood is at least as strong as the white pine we are using and the warping is greatly reduced by the fact that it is all tied in place as part of the structure. One thing I really like about the lumber is that it doesn't seem to check much at all as it is drying. I use the branches as mulch or firewood, depending on the size.

I have noticed that in our forest, cottonwood seedlings don't do well in the understory. As was mentioned earlier, the cottonwood is a pioneer species and when they establish a forest, they create a perfect situation for other secondary species to grow. We have maple, beech, sweet birch, ash and oak taking the place of the cottonwoods.

I like the idea of cottonwood as a workbench! I am about to build one.

One thing I have noticed is that although cottonwood is not particularly dense, it is pretty tough to mill. I would say it takes three times as long to get through as an equal sized white pine or even hemlock log. I believe this to be related to pockets of compression wood that expand when cut and create friction in the cut as apposed to harder wood that simply chips out when cut.

It doesn't smell great when it is first cut but gets better as it dries out.